MARDAN: Markazi Tanzeem-i-Tajran provincial general secretary Zahir Shah Khan has said that sales tax in electricity bills is unacceptable to traders.

He attended a meeting of traders held here on Monday to devise line of action against inclusion of sales tax and other charges in their electricity bills.

Mr Khan said that government was including sales tax ranging from Rs3,000 to 20,000 in electricity bills of traders. “We will never accept these cruel taxes as it is injustice with traders, whose business activities were already affected due to increase in production charges of different items and commodities,” he added.

He asked the authorities concerned to exclude sales tax from their power bills, otherwise, they would not deposit the bills. He said that they would hold protest demonstrations outside Wapda offices if supply of power to any their members was disconnected.

He threatened that they would launch an aggressive protest agitation against the government. He said that they would go on shutter down strike across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa if the rulers continued to include taxes in electricity bills.

Published in Dawn, July 26th, 2022